


Two Steps Back, Five Seconds to the Left

by floatingearth



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Legends: Jango Fett Open Seasons (Comics), Star Wars Prequel Trilogy
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Bad Decisions, Boba is so young and he gets to stay that way a little longer, Escape, Family Dynamic, Family Dynamics, Gen, Injury, Jango Fett Lives, Jango Fett has Issues, Not a Redemption Arc, On the Run, Parent-Child Relationship
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-02-28
Updated: 2021-03-14
Packaged: 2021-03-19 07:28:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 5
Words: 9,607
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29747067
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/floatingearth/pseuds/floatingearth
Summary: A man meant to die in the early hours of a war lives. That doesn't mean things go easily. The Republic doesn't let little things, like the attempted assassination of a senator, slide.
Relationships: Boba Fett & Jango Fett
Comments: 11
Kudos: 33





	1. Too Cool to Die

The Jedi swings his saber in a clean, smooth arc. The blade burns so hot it’s cold. An inch closer and it would sever his windpipe; half a step and his head would roll in the sand. As it is, it tears a deep gash across his throat. Jango clutches at the wound, grasping with both hands. He stumbles backwards, falling to the ground like a heavy sack. The impact kicks a cloud of dust into the air. It floats around his knees. The pain consumes him, narrowing the world down to a single point of focus.

Breathing is a struggle, and movement is impossible. The slightest twitch sends fresh waves of pain across the muscles of his neck. It’s his turn, now, to die like his people on Galidraan, though this Jedi is many years too late. Darkness creeps into his vision. Something numbing and almost like sleep tries to drag him away. Jango refuses to die. Not like this, and not to a Jedi, but some things in life are almost inevitable.

Waking is a slow thing, like swimming up a river of honey. The wound throbs, a burning fire under his skin. The area around it is hot to the touch and raw. It itches almost as much as it hurts. Jango swallows. Pain clamps down on his throat like a vice. The fog around his mind disperses. It occurs to him that he should probably open his eyes.

He is lying on a cot in a makeshift hospital, surrounded by soldiers with survivable injuries. Oh, he remembers this now, though the circumstances are different. He was a soldier himself a lifetime ago. On the battlefield, he had made so many youthful mistakes that should have cost him his life but left him with only scars and bad memories. Jango is a grown man. His second father has been dead for more than twenty years. Even so, he knows exactly what Jaster would have to say. He can practically hear his admonishment. 

Jango doesn’t belong here. The sooner he can grab his son and get off world, the better. With an effort, he props himself up on his elbows. He rolls off the stiff bed, pulling himself to unsteady feet. He feels something like a newborn calf. Distantly, he wonders if it’s shock, exhaustion, or whatever cocktail of drugs let him survive a lightsaber to the neck. He stumbles down the central aisle of the temporary building, pressing his right hand against cots and carts as he passes them by. A glassy-eyed nurse droid rolls up to him.

“You have not yet been discharged, please remain in bed. Rank and designation?”

He doesn’t have either rank or designation. Jango is not a soldier anymore, he has not taken orders in a long, long time, and he’s not about to take them from a nurse droid. He has other, more important things to do. He shoulder-checks the droid and pushes forward until he lifts the flap of the tent. The bright desert sunlight cuts into his eyes.

Finding his son isn’t difficult at all. Boba paces in the patchy, dried out grass just outside the door flap of the tent, shoulders hunched over, fists held stiffly at his side. With every step, he kicks up a small cloud of the dust that coats the planet. For balance, Jango leans against a crate.

“Hey,” he manages to wheeze. The sound of his voice is mangled and wrong, and he can barely speak above a whisper. Boba grins at the sound of it anyway. He jumps to throw his arms around him. Jango grunts at the impact, but he runs his hand through Boba’s curls.

“You’re awake! That’s good. That’s really good.” Boba pulls away, a sudden look of concern on his face. “Are you okay?”

Jango shrugs. “Been better, been worse.” Speaking is going to be difficult for a while. He’s always been a quiet man, but right now every word feels like twisting a buried knife.

“I was really worried. For a while. But you’re fine, right?” Boba asks. “Do you remember what happened?”

Jango knows what happened in the arena; he has no idea what happened after. “Tell me.”

“The Jedi tried to kill you. They almost did, but they didn’t, obviously. There was a whole battle happening- not just a shootout, I mean an actual battle- I don’t know. Anyway, we ended up here.”

It’s very little new information, and something about it strikes him as a dodge. Fine. He won’t pry. “We’ve got to go. Come on.”

Together, they travel down a gravelly road to their temporary lodgings. Whatever weakness had come over him slowly wears off, and by the time they reach their destination he has his strength back. The Slave 1 sits on a landing pad just outside the sandy, two-story building where he’d rented a room for the last few days. 

“Are we going home?”

“No.” They can’t go back to Kamino. Despite his best efforts, the Jedi know of his involvement in the Amidala job. They’re not going to let something like that slide. If Jango were hunting himself- now there’s an interesting thought- the first place he would think to check would be his home. They can’t stay here on Geonosis, either. “You have everything?”

“Well, yeah, but not on the ship. I wasn’t sure what to do with your stuff, and, I don’t know, I never got around to packing.”

“Go get it. Be quick.”

Boba nods, walking up the stairs to their room. The first thing Jango does is peel the blinking tracking beacon off the side of the hull. Just in case, he crushes it under the heel of his boot. It splinters into a thousand broken pieces. The shadow of a man looms behind him.

“Found you.” The Jedi’s voice sends a shiver down his spine. Instinctually, he reaches for his blaster, hand twitching at his side until he remembers he’s unarmed. His weapons and armor are probably sitting in a sack somewhere in their room. Injured and unprotected, he is as close to defenseless as a man like him can be. “Hands where I can see them.”

“Back for another round?” Jango rasps as he lifts his hands in the air. “I won’t die easily this time either.”

“Sir, you are under arrest. You’re to be brought back to Coruscant for questioning.” The saber hums as Mace Windu ignites it, inches from his pounding heart. “This will be easier for all of us if you cooperate.” 

He glances towards the hotel and sees exactly what he fears. Boba, scrambling down the steps and racing towards him. This is one thing he can’t be involved in. Subtly as he can, Jango shakes his head. Boba stills, and Jango shifts the set of his jaw, angling it towards the staircase with a jerk. He seems to get the point, ducking behind the staircase, and Jango closes his eyes in relief. He cannot let the Jedi near his son. That is a wild card that he never wants to see in play.

Jango is in no position to fight back. He knows when he’s been beat. He raises his hands just above his head. Another Jedi slaps a pair of cuffs over his wrists. It touches a nerve. He hates that he remembers this, and he hates himself for letting it happen twice. With a saber humming at his back and his wrists bound, he has no choice but to march up the gangplank and into the prison transport ship.

He is placed in a holding cell with no explanation, though of course he does not need one. The Amidala job had been a disaster. It’s time to face the music. The metal plates beneath his feet vibrate, and he braces himself against a wall for the ship to take off.

Sometime later, on Coruscant, Jango sits on a folding chair with one wrist shackled to a table. It bothers him. He knows why they’ve done it, and it’s a smart decision on their part, but it bothers him. The room is windowless, the stark, pale light casting strange shadows on the walls.

The door creaks open. A Jedi walks in, and not just any Jedi. He’s getting a little too familiar with this one, lately.

“I take it you’re ready for questioning,” Mace Windu says. “You were seen in a set of Mandalorian armor. Does it belong to you?”

He wears his armor whenever he’s working and a good deal of the time when he’s not. He must have been seen in it on the Amidala job, the armor had been just laying out when Kenobi had first arrived, and he’d been wearing it when this Jedi nearly killed him. Jango decides he doesn’t need to make it any easier.

“Why bother with this, eh, Jedi?” Jango rasps. His voice is weak, but the bacta’s doing its job. After three days, the pain is bearable. “Just cut me down already, get it over with. I know you want to.”

“I’m not here to kill you, but the crimes you’re suspected of are serious. It would be in your best interest to answer my questions.” The silence drags on, uncomfortably, until the Jedi finally breaks it. “I can stay here all day, you know. But how are you?” Mace’s voice is calm, suspiciously pleasant, and it grates him.

“How do you think?” From the man in front of him, who who would have killed him if things were different by a matter of inches, the question is insulting.

“I’d imagine, not great, which is why you should cooperate with me today. I just want the answers to a few questions, and then it’ll all be over.”

What’s going to happen is this: the Jedi is going to grill him for hours, and when it’s over, he’ll have signed his life away. Nothing he says matters. They both know how this is going to end.

“I’ll repeat myself. Does the armor belong to you?”

There’s hardly a point in lying to his face when the man saw him wearing it. “What kind of question is that? I didn’t steal it.”

“So, it is yours?”

“It’s an heirloom,” he says. “Yes. It’s mine.”

“Alright, and where were you on the night of the second attempt on Senator Amidala’s life?” On to the big questions. He doesn’t even have to lie to that one, technically.

“Returning home from a business trip.” Technically, every word of it is true. He went straight home after the job went to hell and he had to kill Zam. Her death feels so pointless now.

“A business trip- and what _is_ your business, exactly?”

“Depends on the contract.” The Jedi looks like he knows something Jango doesn’t. They usually do. They use that secret knowledge to destroy his life whenever he has the bad luck to cross their path.

“Just to clarify, you could not have been seen in your armor on Coruscant that day?”

“No. I don’t know anything about that. But if they were in full armor, it could have been anyone.” Most people in the galaxy can barely tell apart two fully armored Mandalorians. Maybe that’s enough to cast a little doubt. The corner of the Jedi’s mouth twitches.

“Mr. Fett, I think we both know it wasn’t just anyone.”

There’s no universe where this ends well. He stares up at the tiled ceiling. In many ways, Boba can take care of himself. He knows; he made sure of it himself. But in so many others, his son is still a child. Silently, uselessly, from the other end of the galaxy, he begs him to know what he’s doing. To stay hidden, to let his father handle this, to not get any terrible ideas.


	2. A Terrible Idea

Back on Kamino, he’d been in a rush to gather up his things, packing his suitcase as tightly as he could. Somehow, over the past few days, just about everything ended up on the floor. Boba unzips both their bags and starts throwing things in at random, balling up his clothes and shoving his father’s armor and everything else into place as fast as he can. He quickly scans the room, checking under the furniture and in tight corners to make sure he hasn’t overlooked anything.

Outside the room, somebody shouts, muffled by the window. Boba races to see what it is. When he sees it, a scream dies in his throat. He throws his hand over his mouth and yanks the curtains closed. For the second time, a Jedi holds a lightsaber close enough to kill his father. Whatever this is, he can’t just let it happen. Boba has to do something. Nobody else is going to. He bends down to pick up the bags, tucking one under his arm and slinging the other over his shoulder.

He runs down the hall and scrambles down the stairs. As he nears the bottom steps, his father meets his eyes. He gives him a serious look, shaking his head. For a moment, Boba stills. He jerks his head towards the stairs. There is a plan, of course there is, Jango Fett always has a plan. Boba just needs to hide for a moment.

He watches from behind a wall. His father just marches up the gangplank of another person’s ship, a massive, chrome-plated transport vessel. He is in handcuffs. Someone walks behind him, holding a lightsaber way too close to his unprotected ribs. The hatch of the ship rolls closed, the landing gears retract, and the ship takes off.

Boba’s confidence turns to confusion and then to terror. By the time he catches his breath and comes to his senses, the vessel is almost gone. Slowly it dawns on him that there’s no plan at all.

He grapples with the bags as they threaten to spill out of his arms, running across the landing pad before climbing into the cockpit of his father’s ship. He throws their bags down on the floor in a heap, not bothering to secure them. Then he straps himself into the pilot’s seat. Staring at the panel in front of his hands, he suddenly feels a little out of his depth.

It’s not that he has never flown before. Sometimes, when he works with his father, Jango lets him take over flying the ship. He’s beginning to think flying by himself is a completely different animal. With his father, there’s someone to guide Boba’s every move and take over if something unexpected happens. Today, he’s on his own, and he’s probably going to crash. He has no choice but to deal with it.

The engine vibrates underneath him as he powers up the ship. He clutches the controls with an iron grip to fly after the transport vessel. He has to walk through the steps in his mind, one by one. It’s as thrilling as it is terrifying. Every joint from his spine to his knuckles locks in place. His muscles clench, rigid with tension. He has to press his foot into the floor to keep it from bouncing. 

The Universe surrounds him, vast and cold and mostly empty. He’s flying, all by himself, and oh, he loves this, and he hates the circumstances. He pushes the accelerator as far forward as it will go. His ship strains to catch up, but the prison transport vessel grows more and more distant with every passing second. Finally, it blinks out of existence right in front of his eyes.

They’re in hyperspace. They’re gone. He’s lost them, and he has no idea where they’re going. His Dad needs help, this time, and Boba isn’t enough. He barely even knows where to start. This sick, hot feeling spreads across his stomach. Suddenly his mouth becomes too small for his tongue. He stalls the ship and hops out of his seat, letting the chair spin behind him. He climbs to the lower level of the ship. There, he runs the tap and drinks straight from it. Cold water splashes on the side of his face.

It has a grounding effect. Boba takes a deep, shuddering breath, plants his palms on the counter, and stares at himself in the mirror. Okay. He can take this one step at a time. He’s already off Geonosis, so the first step is complete. Next, he has to find out where they’re taking his dad. Then he has to go there, and the last step is to save him. That’s only three things. When he looks at it that way, it doesn’t sound too hard at all. He might be missing a step or two in-between, but he can worry about that later.

-

His father’s case is the kind that digs its little claws into the public consciousness and refuses to let go. Every holo personality alive wants to talk about it on their program, and Boba can’t go ten seconds without hearing about it, no matter how hard he tries. He ends up watching the trial almost completely by accident.

An hour ago, when he tuned into the station for background noise while he worked on his plan, it had been a music program. Somewhere down the line, it switched over to a news broadcast. He barely notices, at first. Then, he hears the name _Jango Fett_ and suddenly, he’s all ears.

Listening to the commentary from the news anchors is painful. They’re saying all kinds of horrible things about his father, but if there’s one thing Boba needs right now it’s information. He sits on his knees and makes himself listen. A part of him holds out hope that somehow, it will work out okay. Maybe they’ll see who his Dad is, that he’s not a bad guy, and they won’t send him to prison.

That doesn’t happen. He didn’t really expect it to.

-

Boba’s slicing skills are pretty nonexistent. It frustrates him easily, and he only knows the basics. One of these days he’ll have to get some practice in, but now isn’t the time. For what he’s planning, he needs someone who’s actually good at it. The lower levels of Coruscant are a good place to find a person like that.

Most of the jobs his father brought him on took them to dark, seedy places like this. He wishes his father were here now, but he’s not, and that’s the beginning and the end of Boba’s problem. The room is dark and saturated, with teal and purple lights dancing across the floor. It’s filled to the brim with people. He gets more than a few stares. He doesn’t belong here. He curls in on himself as he makes his way through the crowds, exposed and uneasy.

Boba meets his slicer in a lounge in the back. The couch is sticky with spilled drinks. Her makeup glows in the dark and her metallic dress is shrink-wrapped to her arms and neck.

“I was expecting someone a little older,” she says, slinging one jewelry-covered arm over the back of the couch.

“It’s not my fault you were wrong,” he replies. The slicer rolls her eyes. 

“I do serious work. What could you possibly want from me? I’m not going to- to look into the gossip on the playground for you, I’m not going to hack into your school’s gradebook.”

“Shut up. I didn’t come here to ask for something dumb. I’ve got ‘serious work’ for you. And I’ve got money,” he says, patting his credit-loaded pocket. “You’re not supposed to be a jerk to people who want to pay you.”

“Alright. Fine. Tell me what you want.” She props her feet up on a coffee table.

“Okay. Good.” He’s not really sure where to start. “I need you to find a prisoner for me. And then everything you can about the prison.”

“You going to tell me who we’re looking for?”

“Jango Fett.”

“What the hell is wrong with you, kid?” She downs the rest of her drink in one gulp. “On second thought, don’t answer that.”

“I wasn’t going to,” he mutters under his breath. “So, what, you’re not going to do it? I bet you’re scared. Or maybe you’re just not good enough!”

“Meet me back here in two days and I’ll have your little job done.” She pats him on the head as she stands up, and Boba hates her for it. It all evens out in the end when she comes back with the data he needs. The exact location of his father, and an architectural diagram of the prison where he’s held.

-

As it turns out, ventilation shafts aren’t exactly built for walking around in. They’re dark, hot when they’re not freezing, and even for a ten-year-old, it’s a tight squeeze. Boba shuffles on his hands and knees through a maze of fans and tubes until he finally finds the vent cover that he’s looking for, the one that will drop him right down into cell B-7482.

Sitting with his legs crossed, Boba pulls the pouch he’s wearing on a sling into his lap. He unclasps it and reaches inside, fishing around in the near darkness for the small screwdriver he needs. For a moment, his stomach sinks, and he worries he forgot it back on the ship, or maybe it fell out of his bag. Finally, his fingers find it wedged against the wide seam in the bottom of the bag. One by one, he pulls out each of the screws keeping the vent cover in place. It falls to the floor with a loud bang. 

Boba hangs down after it, locking his knees to keep from falling out of the ceiling. The blood rushes to his head. Like a punch to the stomach, he realizes he’s made a terrible mistake. That’s not his dad.

“Is this B-7482?” He asks. His voice squeaks.

“You’re in the A block. B block’s a floor below.” The prisoner, a bulky giant of a man, crosses his arms over his chest. “I don’t know what this is, but I want in.”

“Sorry, can’t help you!” Boba swings up, pulling himself back into the air vents. Heart hammering in his chest, he scrambles away.

Through the metal walls, he hears the echo of the prisoner shouting for the guards. It’s very quickly followed by an alarm, blaring loud and angry in his ears as it bounces off the walls. Of course, he had to get the wrong cell, and of course the cell he did get had to belong to a little snitch. That’s just the luck he’s been having lately. Well, if he’s going to get caught, he’s going to get caught. It’s too late to turn back now. Boba has a job to do.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next Time: With A Worse Execution 
> 
> Kiddo's trying. He's making things worse- but he's trying.


	3. With a Worse Execution

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> tried to make it fun and sci fi for you

Three of the four walls of his cell lead nowhere, but the outwards facing wall is no wall at all. It’s an energy field, an invisible curtain of electricity that is impossible to pass through. There are no weak spots, nothing that can be forced open. Apparently, nobody told Coruscanti prison architects that there is such a thing as over-engineering. An electrical problem- like the one Jango’s causing right now- is all it will take to shut down the whole cell block.

At least, he thinks it will. It might just cook him alive.

If a guard catches him like this- ceiling tiles busted, wires dangling to the ground, a stolen soldering iron in his hand- he’s screwed, but honestly, things can hardly get worse than they already are. Either he breaks out, or he dies in prison, and Jango’s not going to die in prison. That old, familiar desperation is back in his blood, only this time there’s something left for him on the other side. 

An alarm rings in his ears. He tenses before realizing that it’s too distant to have to do with him. Those assholes upstairs are picking a fight again. It’s not his problem. Jango goes back to his wires, carefully fishing out a safety feature and cutting it loose. Then, suddenly, the vent cover clatters to the floor. Maybe it is his problem. A boy jumps out of the new hole in the ceiling, landing in a heap on the floor.

It’s _definitely_ his problem. It’s nice, in a way, to know his son is in one piece, but this prison is the last place he ever wants Boba to be. He just wishes he were more surprised.

“Boba- I-” He drops his face into the palms of his hands, rubbing his eye sockets. “What?”

“Hey, Dad. Your voice is back.” Boba squints, cocking his head to the side. “Mostly.”

“That’s not the point.” He doubts his voice will ever lose the dry, raspy quality Mace Windu gave it. It’s as much a scar as the raised line of tissue across his throat is. “You can’t be here. You need to leave right now!”

“I am going to leave,” Boba tells him, “With you. Why else would I be here?”

That’s not what he meant, at all, and Boba knows it. They’ll talk about the mess that is this situation later, when they’re not moments away from disaster. He points at the ceiling. “That alarm is because of you, am I right?”

“Yeah. Sorry.” Sheepishly, Boba rubs the back of his neck.

“Security is going to find you regardless, then. If they know who you are, they’re already on their way. And when they do find you, they’re going to find my renovation project, too.” He sighs. “Might as well get on with it, then. Stand back.”

He connects one last set of wires, a pair of braided coils that absolutely should not meet. If it was ever going to work, this should give the system the sudden surge of power it needs to shut down. Slowly, the two wires begin to heat up. Electricity crackles and his hair stands up on end. For a moment, nothing else happens. Then sparks fly.

The ceiling lights flicker brighter than they’ve ever been before burning out and plunging the hall into near darkness. With a whining hum, the shield in front of his cell dissolves. It spreads down the hall like wildfire. Jango blinks as his eyes slowly adjust to the darkness.

“What all have you got in that bag of yours?”

Boba digs a hand through the contents. “A screwdriver, a lighter, whatever this is, some rope, a few of these guys.” He pats the holsters at his sides. “Oh, and blasters, obviously. One for both of us.”

“Give me one.”

Boba complies, handing one of the two blasters to Jango. His son arms himself with the other. Jango weighs it in his hands with a sharp nod.

“You had better hope we survive this.”

“That’s the plan,” Boba says under his breath.

“Nothing about _this_ counts as a plan,” Jango tells him. He flips the blaster over to kill and leaves his cell behind. He’s not alone. Other inmates looking to take advantage spill out of their cells.

Dark and densely crowded, the hall quickly becomes a violent mass of people. Somebody trips into somebody else, and an all-out brawl ensues. Only when Jango’s nearly broken free of the mob does he realize they’ve become separated. He cranes his neck to search for Boba and gets half a glimpse of the back of his head before it disappears under the river of people. Jango forces his way back in, pushing against the current. He shoves inmates to the side without caring who gets trampled.

Boba’s on the ground when he finds him. Jango kneels down to help him to his feet, patting him on the shoulder as he takes it all in. For the most part, he looks fine, if a little shaken up. “You alright there, son?”

“Yeah.” He nods a little too quickly. “Yeah, I’m okay.”

“Good. Follow me and stay close.” The riot might serve as a decent distraction. Any guards will be too preoccupied with that to notice a boy who broke in and a prisoner who broke out until they’re halfway across the galaxy.

Jango flattens against a wall, and gestures for Boba to follow suit. Holding his breath, he takes a look down the hall. In the darkness of the power outage, the shadows blur together. He wishes he had his helmet. With only his bare eyes, it’s impossible to see clearly. He hears nobody, and he risks moving on. A moment too soon, the emergency lights flicker on, bathing the hall in a dim, eerie glow. They find themselves facing the business ends of a few too many blasters.

“Prisoner, return to your cell and nobody gets hurt.”

Jango’s eyes shift to the left to meet his sons’, asking a silent question he answers without a word. Boba takes his place at his back and Jango draws his blaster. One guard fires a shot, missing by inches. Jango lands a bolt in their thigh, and it all takes a turn for the worse. They’re outnumbered, if not outmatched.

“I’ll catch up with you,” he shouts over the chaos. “Go!”

“I’m not leaving!” The boy argues, shooting just like Jango taught him. “I won’t do it.”

“I said _go_ , Boba!”

Blaster bolts sizzle overhead, some nearly close enough to singe the hair off his skin. “I’ll find you, just get out of here!”

With a huff, Boba runs off behind him, and he’s glad of it. Jango moves in a tight semicircle, swerving just in time to miss a hole clear through his skull. The blaster grows hot in his grip as he fires. At the first opportunity, he makes a break for it, twisting every few moments to shoot the occasional over-the-shoulder shot. He darts around a corner in search of his son.

“Boba?” he hisses. “Boba!”

“I’m right here!” The boy pops out of seemingly nowhere, one of his talents.

“Alright,” he whispers, mind racing, “I know how we’re getting out of here. Come on.”

He looks behind his shoulder, and then he runs, until he finds the service door, which nearly blends into the rest of the hallway. He throws his weight against it three times before it gives. It falls to the floor with a dull thud, exposing a maze of leaking pipes and narrow staircases. The system is on lockdown, the alarms growing steadily louder and faster as they climb. Security guard’s footsteps bounce off the walls from below. He forces open a door marked with a faded letter A.

They sneak away into twisting, dusty hallways until he finds a wide hatch door, the one the prison accepts supply deliveries through. He shoots the chain lock and pries the door open, to reveal a square landing pad and a dead end. Even the lower levels of Coruscant are hundreds of feet in the air. The drop off the side is so steep Jango can’t see the bottom, and he doesn’t have his jet pack. There’s nowhere else to go. Boba plants his palms on the ledge and swings beneath it, disappearing before Jango can stop him. His stomach flips.

“What are you doing?” He yells, half-strangled.

“Come on,” Boba says, waving a hand from underneath the platform. “Just trust me.”

Jango sighs and follows him, straddling the scaffolding beneath the landing pad. A long tower of support beams attaches the landing pad to the side of the prison tower. It functions almost as a ladder. Boba’s arms are looped around a metal bar, the bottoms of his feet flat against another.

“Is there a reason we’re down here?”

Boba repositions himself, shifting to keep his balance while he points at a very distant spot several stories below. “The ship, Dad.”

If he squints, he can just about make out a splotch of color that matches the paneling of the Slave I. 

“Couldn’t get a closer parking spot, eh?”

“Oh, yeah, because it would have worked out great if I landed on the roof.”

Jango laughs under his breath. “Point taken.”

They descend. The metal bites his palms and leaves a rust-colored residue on his skin. When they’re nearly halfway down to the nearest walkable surface, Boba loses his footing, letting out a strangled yelp as he slips backwards. Jango swings out his arm, and barely, barely manages to steady him. The boy wraps his entire body around one metal beam, gasping for breath.

“Careful now, buddy,” Jango says. “You’re alright.”

“I can’t climb down.”

“Course you can. Just slipped a little, that’s all. You’ve still got this.” Jango readjusts, locking one elbow around the back of a support bracer. “I’ll be right there with you.”

“Do we have to right now?” They probably should, but… no. Nobody’s coming to chase them down this deathtrap.

“You can have a minute.” Boba steels himself, gives him a stiff nod, and they keep climbing.

It’s a slow, careful climb the rest of the way down, one rung at a time. Then it’s a long walk through a ghost town, a neighborhood built and forgotten generations ago. The buildings crumble, roofs caving in and walls leaning to the side. The walkways are cracked, splitting into chunks. He has this feeling that any moment, someone will come out to ambush them, he’ll be caught and dragged back or killed, but it never happens. There’s nobody here. 

Somehow, they board the Slave 1, and he’s still alive. Somehow, they get off what’s become one of his least favorite planets and neither of them are dead. When his prison jumpsuit is in the incinerator and his armor is back on and he’s finally caught his breath, they have time to talk.

“Explain yourself,” he says. “What made you think any of that was a good idea?”

Boba shrugs. “I don’t know. It was, though.”

Mentally, he goes through the events he knows about and makes a few assumptions about the ones he wasn’t there for. “No, it wasn’t. There’s about a dozen ways things could have gone wrong today, Boba. Sometimes I wonder what’s going through your head!”

Scowling, Boba jerks away from him. “I know, I know, I _know_. But it went fine!”

He takes a deep breath. “Yes. This time, we both got out. Next time you pull a stunt like that you could get yourself killed.”

“So what? You were…” He trails off. “I had to try! What else was I going to do?”

“It’s not your responsibility. You shouldn’t have to worry about any of it.” What kind of backwardness is this, that his young son took it upon himself to break him out? He can’t decide if he should be prouder of Boba or more ashamed of himself.

“I just wanted to help. I’m sorry.” The boy’s face is pinched.

He’s killed men without remorse, but right now, Jango feels like the galaxy’s biggest asshole. He sighs and decides to drop it. “I’m not… angry, I just don’t want you getting hurt. You’ve got to be careful, you know? Think things through.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next Time: Space Road Trip 
> 
> My old supervisor from when I did stage hand gigs is vibrating in unexplained horror right now. Dan I'm sorry for the electrical work in this chapter and for being inept with audio equipment. In my defense I made about $8 an hour <3


	4. Space Road Trip

“Fuel situation’s getting dire,” his father announces as he emerges from the lower deck, “Everything else- eh. I’ll regret it if we don’t stock up soon.”

“Is it that bad?” Boba asks. He probably could have taken better care of the ship, but when he’d been solely responsible for it, there were about a million things on his mind more important than water levels and energy consumption.

Jango waves a hand dismissively. “We’ll be fine, for now, but there’s a lot of travel up ahead for us. I want to be prepared. Anyway, I’ve got a place in mind.”

“Oh yeah?”

“Yeah, a little satellite town. Honestly, it’s not even really a town. It’ll suit our purposes, though.”

With a quickly burning tank of fuel and a half-full storage compartment, they make their first stop only a short distance from Coruscant. It’s a spaceport and nothing else, drifting through the universe for no reason except to make money for whoever owns it. Boba’s not sure how people live in places like this. He definitely wouldn’t want to. 

His father slips his helmet over his head. “You’re going to want to stretch your legs.”

Boba rolls out of the copilot’s seat and follows him out the hatch into a shipyard. Jango reaches into his belt and drops a stack of credits into the waiting hand of an Ugnaught wearing goggles and a red cargo suit.

“This should about cover the hangar and the fuel.” There’s an edge to his voice, as he adds, “And a tip. Just in case anyone shows up looking for us. I’m sure you’ll point them in the _right_ direction.”

“I rarely remember a customer enough to share his business with others.” The mechanic, who can apparently read between the lines, slips the change into one of his many pockets. “Your ship will be ready soon.”

They leave the hangar behind for the sprawling web of tunnels of the port market. Dozens and dozens of stalls are built into the rounded walls, selling things like droid and engine parts, weapons and scavenged armor, trinkets from far-off worlds. Spacefarers of every possible kind push their way through the fast-paced crowd to argue with traders. It’s enough to make his head spin.

“Essentials only, this time,” his father says. “We won’t be stopping for a while after this.”

“That’s why we’re stocking up in the first place, then? So you don’t have to stop much?”

“Yes. The less time we spend around other people, the better,” Jango explains. “We don’t want to be noticed. Keep your head down, try to stay quiet.”

The first place they go is a dry goods stall. His father haggles down the price, and they’re able to walk away with tins of dehydrated food and several heavy boxes of rations. _Yay._ He knows better than to complain, but neither are exactly his favorite. Travel food tastes like chalk when it doesn’t taste like mush. Boba stacks the cans in the palm of his hand, tucking the last one under his chin to keep the tower from toppling over. Meanwhile, Jango balances the ration boxes against his hip.

Then they’re off to a weaponry booth to load up on blaster cartridges, and a first aid stand for rolls of bandages and tubes of bacta gel. Both of them end up fairly loaded down with mountains of stuff threatening to collapse and spill everywhere, especially with the way they have to swerve left and right against the endless stream of people. Carrying it all back to the Slave 1 is a job and a half. Then, they load their purchases into the ship.

His father does a quick check, to make sure the mechanic isn’t trying to rip them off, and Boba climbs up into the cockpit. In minutes, they’ve left the port town far behind.

-

Time is weird in space. There’s hardly a difference between morning and night. Days blend into each other when there’s nothing to separate them.

He’s eating his breakfast one morning, in the tight living quarters of the ship. At least, he’s calling it morning- he only woke up twenty minutes ago, and his father’s only on his first cup of black caf, so it has to be morning. The Slave I has no real kitchen. His father tries, but nothing he’s able to scrounge together out of ration bars and rehydrated food and almost no equipment is as good as what he used to make in their apartment.

Kamino might have been a creepy, lonely place to live sometimes, but it had been his home. He misses having a place to go back to.

“Can I ask you a question?” It’s something that’s been poking at the back of Boba’s mind for a while now. A part of him is embarrassed to have to ask at all. Maybe he should just know the answer without having to check, but it’s not the kind of thing he wants to just assume. He has to know for sure. His father raises his eyebrows as he takes a sip from his mug.

“Go on.”

Boba takes a deep breath and spits it out. “We’re never going back home, are we?”

“To Kamino?” Boba nods and Jango shakes his head sympathetically. “Not for a long time, no. Things are going to have to change for a while.” 

“I know.” Things already have, in a way, but if the words to express that exist, Boba doesn’t have them. Unable to look him in the eye, Boba stares at the reflection of the artificial white light on the glossy finish of the table. “Do you think they’re going to- well, you know. Are they going to find us?”

Something in his father’s eyes turns soft and urgent at the same time. “Listen to me, son. I have a plan. As long as we follow it, we’ll be fine. Nobody is going to find us, and if they do, I’ll be ready for them.”

Jango Fett might still be the strongest person he knows, but after everything he’s not sure whether his father will be able to keep his word this time. Boba decides to keep that thought to himself. The truth is those weeks where his father was gone were terrifying. If he never admits it happened, then he doesn’t have to worry about it happening again. “Alright. I understand.”

“Good. I’m glad to hear it. Thank you,” Jango says. He sets his empty mug in the sink and stops to squeeze Boba’s shoulder as he passes. “It won’t be like this forever.”

“I know, Dad,” he says, even though he doesn’t. 

-

A day and a night on Dantooine. The better part of an afternoon on Trask. Three days on Ryloth. He tries to soak up the experience every time they’re on world- standing on real ground, breathing real air, walking through wide-open areas, all the things he misses during long flights. He knows why they have to keep moving. He still wishes they could stop for longer.

Generally speaking, Boba doesn’t mind long flights. He likes them better when he’s the one who gets to fly, of course, but even when he doesn’t, space travel can be cool. Usually. Flying gets a lot less fun when he spends almost all of his time on board. Lately, in the long stretches of time spent in hyperspace, he’s beginning to realize just how tiny the ship’s living quarters are.

Drifting aimlessly would, of course, be a waste of fuel. They’re always headed to some planet or another, and Boba’s always happy when they arrive, though they never stay anywhere for longer than a couple days. He knows there’s a plan. There has to be. There’s a rhyme and reason to it all, but he can’t for the life of him figure out what it is.

“When are we going to get there?” Boba asks, not for the first time. He rests the side of his face against his knuckles, pushing his cheek up towards his eye.

“Not for a while,” his father says as he pilots the ship. It’s the exact kind of frustratingly vague answer he expected.

“Okay,” Boba says. Maybe he can work with that. “How long is a while?” 

“You’ll find out.” Typical. He just can’t get a straight answer out of his dad today, apparently.

“Do you even know where we’re going?” Boba asks, rolling his eyes. 

“Yes.”

Boba waits a moment, for Jango to elaborate even a little. He doesn’t. “So, if you know where we’re going, why don’t you know how long it’s going to take?”

His father sighs. “If you need something to do, you can take inventory. You could clean the refresher. Oh, you could work on your modules.” 

“I’m not that desperate,” Boba tells him.

“Son, you can complain about being bored when you’re all caught up on your school modules. Actually, you know what, you need to do those. Aren’t you still two weeks behind?”

“Wow. Forget I said anything,” he says.

Jango shoots him a look. “No.”

In Boba’s defense, he’s been a little busy lately to do his homework, but he’s also even further behind than his father knows. He’d like to keep it to himself, though, so he’s not about to argue that one. Defeated, he bends down to scoop up his data pad from where it sits at his feet.

Something cold and wet plinks on the top of his head, and Boba looks up just in time to watch the leak become a small stream.

Jango swears under his breath, in Mando’a, as he stares up at the steady waste of water. “That’s just perfect, isn’t it?”

“Couldn’t be any better.”

“Alright, alright,” he says. “Let’s see if I can’t fix this. You go find a bucket to put under it and meet me in the maintenance crawlspace.” 

Even a slow leak is a problem on a ship, where every drop of water is precious and accounted for, and this is a pretty bad one. On the plus side, he doesn’t have to do his long division.

Five minutes later, he finds himself crouching in the guts of the ship, surrounded by tools and parts. He aims a flashlight at the spot where the connection between two pipes has weakened down to nothing while his father twists and contorts himself to reach the pipes. The temporary seal he puts in place holds up just barely long enough to get them to the nearest populated world, and someone who actually knows what they’re doing.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is just a glimpse. Imagine weeks and weeks of this. Just, chaos, guys. Anyway, I do have a tumblr if you'd like to talk there/ see my posts @floatingearth
> 
> Next time: Fight Me In This Denny's Parking Lot, Jedi


	5. Fight Me In This Denny's Parking Lot, Jedi

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This took a lot of editing- i mean a lot- for a chapter that ultimately serves the same function as it did in my rough draft. Hope you enjoy

If Jango has any choice at all but to run, never staying in one place long enough to even lose the jet lag, he would personally love to hear it. Nobody, he knows better than anyone, can run forever, but he’ll be damned if he doesn’t try.

There might be a handful of people around the galaxy in his debt, but he’s in no position to collect favors. Relying on others is risky at the best of times. Right now, it can only earn him a one-way ticket back to his cell. Then there’s the ever-expanding list of safe planets. Certain worlds are off limits to him now. Population centers are too well monitored, so he avoids them. Any world he has a connection to is too obvious. Those are the first places any half-decent tracker would look.

That’s the problem, really- Jango has a history, and he should have better concealed it. A dedicated person could do a little digging, come up with a rough map of Jango’s life, and use it to figure out every one of his moves if he isn’t careful. Dedicated people are searching for him. The least he can do is make it a challenge.

The day’s stop begins like any other planetside stop does- with him pouring even more money into his credit sink of a ship. He can afford it, now; he remembers a time when he couldn’t. With all the travel he’s been doing, it’s almost a wonder he isn’t running through water and fuel even faster.

The garage is a busy one, for a planet this size, which is both a good and a bad thing. There are more people around to notice him, but he’s more forgettable when they all see travelers every day, and Jango doesn’t want to be remembered. He still has this feeling, hot at the back of his neck, like he’s being watched. He puts a hand on Boba’s shoulder.

“I don’t like it here,” Jango mutters as he leaves the garage behind. “Something’s… off.”

“Nah. You’re just paranoid.” Boba stretches his arms over his head, tilting his face towards the sun.

“I’ve got every right to be.” It doesn’t count as paranoia when everything that keeps you on edge is a devastatingly real possibility. "This is going to be a short one. In and out."

“They're all short,” Boba says. He’s not wrong, but there are good reasons for that. They've been over this at least a dozen times. “Can we at least get some food while we’re here?”

“There’s food on the ship.”

“Yeah, but that’s not what I meant,” Boba says. “Please?”

He sighs and caves. It’s not like they can leave quite yet, anyway, and it has been a while since he ate a hot meal. “Fine. But don’t start expecting this everywhere.”

Boba pumps a fist in the air. The last drop of his luck is about to run out, but of course, Jango doesn’t know that yet.

-

“It doesn’t really count as defying orders,” Anakin begins, talking out loud in the cockpit of the starfighter, “if I don’t give them a chance to stop me.”

The droid snarks at him, a sarcastic stream of beeps and whistles, and he rolls his eyes. “Don’t tell me you disapprove. You. Of all droids.”

R2-D2 informs him that no, he doesn’t disapprove- he just loves watching disasters unfold.

“I know that, but you don’t have to admit it,” he says. “Keep it to yourself. And anyway, guess you’re not going to have fun, because this isn’t a disaster.”

The silence in the cockpit is deafening. “It’s not! Come on, between the two of us, we’ll be able to figure it out. And it’s not like I have any other choice.”

R2 trills, quietly conceding the point. There’s a reason he loves that droid, and for this mission, he’s more than happy to bring him along.

Anyway, angry as the council might be in the morning, they’ll have to forgive him. Eventually. It’s not like he could have brought this before them. Either he would be told off for letting his emotions cloud his judgement or he would be told that resources were better allocated elsewhere, and he should let law enforcement do their job. Which is a joke. They’re the ones who let Jango Fett escape in the first place.

Jango Fett, the man who tried to kill his wife, runs free. Any moment, he could turn around to finish the job. Anakin’s not about to let that happen.

For a while, his target stays one step ahead. He has to admit he’s good. Anakin follows dead-end leads, or lands on planets just after the bounty hunter leaves them behind, but he doesn’t give it up. He can’t. This is about Padme. He’ll do anything to keep her safe. Sooner or later, he has to slip up.

A tip leads him to a barely functional planet on the outer rim, only a few parsecs from the planet he was born. Not that Anakin's going back to Tatooine. There's nothing for him there anymore. He’s ready for anything- confrontation or another disappointment. For once- for once- it’s confrontation. He's not too late this time. Jango Fett is here. 

-

Jango takes a booth by a window, and the cushions squeak under his weight. He orders a bowl of something hot and filling, and a caf, because sometimes he just can’t resist a caf he didn’t make himself. His son, on the other hand, inhales a blue milkshake and a fried sandwich at a speed that rivals that of light.

“Everything you ever dreamed of?” he asks, quirking an eyebrow.

Boba hums a yes. Then he looks out the window and something in his expression shifts. “Uh, Dad?” he asks, pointing a thumb towards something across the street.

“What- oh. Oh _no,_ ” Jango groans. He should have known. Nobody can run forever. There’s a man in dark robes leaving a Coruscanti ship behind. He knows a Jedi when he sees one.

“Time to go?” Boba asks.

“Time to go,” Jango agrees. He slaps a wad of credits on the table and throws on his helmet. The door dings, softly, as the Jedi, who might be twenty, pushes it open. In one fluid motion, he shrugs his robes off his shoulders and ignites his lightsaber. Well, Jango has a weapon or seventeen on him, too, this time. He grabs his favorite blaster from his thigh holster and points it across the aisle at the Jedi.

“I’ve been looking for you, Jango Fett,” says the Jedi, scowling down at him. _No shit._

“And you’ve found me. Congratulations.”

“Whatever you do, you’re coming with me. Might as well make it easy on yourself.”

He tilts his head, as if he were considering it. “No.”

“You don’t have a choice here. You tried to kill my- you tried to kill Padme!” The Jedi yells, stumbling over his words, “Senator Amidala? Ringing any bells?”

Yes, actually. Jango regrets ever taking that job. It’s pretty much ruined his life. 

“If I tried, she’d already be dead. I say she got off easy. Can’t say the same thing about you, though, Jedi. I’ve beaten your kind before.” And he’s lost terribly to them, lost everything he ever was to them, but that’s his business.

“You haven’t beaten Anakin Skywalker, you cocky bastard.”

“So this is happening, then.” He lets his gaze flicker to Boba. “Get down, son.” 

Boba listens, ducking under the table. Jango pulls the trigger. Somebody screams.

It’s not that he’s a bad shot; Jedi reflexes are just completely unfair. The blaster bolt ricochets off Skywalker’s lightsaber and burns a smoldering hole in the pastel paint of the opposite wall. First chance Jango gets, he makes a break for it, shooting even as he backs out the door. The Jedi follows and the fight moves to a dry patch of grass just outside the diner.

Out of the corner of his eye, he watches Boba dart out the door, and Jango would really rather not see whatever he’s planning in action. The boy doesn’t even have a blaster on him.

“The ship, Boba!” He shouts. His son runs towards it. _Good._

In a flashy show of acrobatics, the Jedi leaps into the air and brings his blade down over Jango’s head. He dives to the ground to avoid it before planting his feet and shooting a steady stream at Skywalker. The Jedi swings his saber and the blaster bolts just bounce off. If there’s one thing to be said for trained Jedi, it’s that they don’t go down easy.

He doesn’t actually have to win this, he decides. Especially since it looks like he’s not going to.

With a press of a button on his vambrace, his jetpack ignites behind him and he launches into the air. Jango rains a storm of blaster fire down on the Jedi from above as he flies back to the ship. He scrambles into the cockpit, where his son waits for him, staring out the window almost frozen.

“Ready to go?” Jango asks, seizing the controls before he’s even sitting down.

“I’m ready to get away from that guy.” 

“You think he stands a chance? I’ll take care of him.”

He heads for the skies, engines burning as hot and fast as they’ll go. He flees the system, then the parsec. It’s not long before Skywalker’s right on his tail and firing. Good thing he knows just where to run. Jango swerves left and right to avoid the Jedi’s cannon blasts while he punches in the coordinates of a nearby binary system and jumps into hyperspace. The planet is a dead end. It could buy him a little time. Skywalker might not even know it exists, it’s so far from the typical haunting grounds of Jedi.

He shifts out of hyperspace just beyond the limits of the planet’s atmosphere. So does Skywalker, blinking into view just behind him. Jango spins the ship around to face him, firing up the cannons to unleash them at Skywalker. Jango scorches his hull but damages nothing but the paint job. The Jedi retaliates. He lands a real hit. The ship spins off course, and Jango lurches to the side at the impact. Righting the ship is a struggle.

Red warning lights flash overhead. A terrible sputtering noise comes from the engine. Even the main functions of the ship are damaged. He can’t fire his weapons, and the delicate balance of the ship is completely shot. The controls are almost unresponsive; the absolute best he can do is guide the ship in the rough direction of the dirtball in front of him.

The ship spins end over end as they break through the atmosphere.

“Are we going to die?” Boba screams. It comes out strangled. “We’re going to die.”

Yes, they are. Almost definitely, in fact. If it were anyone but Boba, he would think answering that question a waste of his last few breaths. It’s not anyone else, though. That’s his son sitting in the copilot’s chair. He shouldn’t have to know. “I’ve got a handle on this. Don’t you worry, son.”

“Okay,” he whispers. “Okay. I—okay."

Fighting against the ship with everything he has, Jango forces the trajectory to even out, but that hardly helps. Now they’re just plummeting to the surface in a straight path instead of a twisting one. The ship won’t slow down. Every second, the air inside the cockpit gets hotter and hotter, as the ruptured heat shields struggle to keep them from burning up.

The electrics fizzle out with a pop. Black smoke fills the cockpit, stinging his eyes and burning his lungs. The ship won’t listen to him. Instinctually, uselessly, he thrusts an arm across Boba’s chest. With a sickening crunch, the ship finally crashes to the surface, screeching to halt over a long stretch of desert. Everything is still, and the sand blows in through the cracks.

Huh. _That_ went great. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> tbh you can't really get mad at Anakin for bringing down a ship with a child in it- Obi-Wan tried to do the same thing in AotC. only difference is Anakin can shoot. 
> 
> Next Time: Why Did It Have To Be Tatooine?


End file.
